Meyer Fortes: Notebooks, correspondence and papers.

Meyer Fortes was born in South Africa of Russian Jewish parents. He came to England in 1927 to carry out research at University College London on intelligence tests, for which he was awarded a Ph.D in 1930. He then accepted a research studentship at the London School of Economics, where he came under the influence of Bronislaw Malinowski and C. G. Seligman. Supported by fellowships from the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures and from the Rockefeller Foundation, he and his first wife Sonia undertook two terms of fieldwork among the Tallensi people of the northern Gold Coast between 1934 and 1937. This period of his career is particularly well-represented in his correspondence. He lectured at the London School of Economics (1938-39) and at Oxford (1939-41); and then returned to West Africa, gathering information in Nigeria for Margery Perham's Nuffield College Colonial Research project, engaging in intelligence work for the Gold Coast government (including a mission to Ouagadougu), and finally (while head of the Sociological Department of the West African Institute at Accra 1944-46) directing a major social survey in Ashanti (1). In 1946 he became Reader in Social Anthropology at Oxford, and moved to Cambridge four years later as William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology, with a fellowship at King's College. He retired from his chair in 1973, but continued to write, lecture and travel almost up to his death on 27 January 1983.

Meyer Fortes bequeathed his extensive archive to Cambridge University Library in 1983. Some 175 additional letters, apparently separated from the main body after Professor Fortes' death, were presented by Dr. Drucker-Brown in November 2001.

Catalogued material (except for noted restricted correspondence) is available for consultation, but readers are advised that copyright remaining in the writings of Meyer Fortes is the property of his daughter Mrs. N. Marshall (36 Victoria Avenue, Didsbury, Manchester M20 2RA), whose permission is necessary for publication.

Please cite as Cambridge University Library, Department of Manuscripts and University Archives, Meyer Fortes: Notebooks, correspondence and papers., MS Add.8405

Papers accumulated by Meyer Fortes are also held at Cambridge University Library (Add. MS 9359).

This is an interim catalogue providing a summary outline of the collection prior to full cataloguing.